Brass in Pocket (5 page)

Greg was reaching for his phone to call for a tow when they heard Catherine's voice over his radio.

Catherine
, Riley thought.

Every time it looked like their shift might get a little easier.…

C
ATHERINE RADIOED
G
REG
because she had known him longer than she had Riley. Gil might have been more systematic, would maybe have called Riley because he had called Greg the last time. Or perhaps he still would have chosen Greg simply because he had seniority over Riley. Catherine didn't pretend there was anything to her decision but familiarity, though—she chose Greg because he had been part of her lab family longer than Riley. In the long run, it didn't make much difference, and as she got to know Riley better, she was sure that would change.

“What's up?” Greg asked.

“How's it going out there?”

“We're making some progress. This is definitely a homicide. Someone rigged the victim's airplane muffler to fill his cockpit with carbon monoxide. We still have to process the plane, because that's our crime scene. But it'll be a big job.”

“Is it secure?” Catherine asked.

“It will be in a little while. We're going to park it in a hangar here. There's a uniform who's going to stay with it until it's safely inside, and then we'll work it.”

“Tell the uni to stay with it a while longer, Greg. I need you to go somewhere else.”

“Really? Where?” She thought she heard a sigh in his voice. She could hardly blame him, but she couldn't go out on another call herself yet. She had brought all the collected evidence—the hairs, fibers, lifted fingerprints, and so on—from the motel room scene back to the lab to get its analysis started. Because there was a dead body in the room and a woman missing—the address shown on Antoinette O'Brady's driver's license didn't exist, and the document itself was now in the Questioned Documents unit to determine if it was real or not—that case had priority, and she intended to stay on it until the woman was found.

“Northeast side,” she said. She read the address off the report she had received.

“That's way out there,” Greg said.

“Murder knows no bounds.”

“So it's another homicide?”

“I don't actually know yet. There's a new casino under construction out there. Pretty far from the Strip, but I guess the theory is that people will go just about anywhere to throw away their money. And as bad as traffic's getting in the city, maybe they've got a point. With all the new housing developments out that way, there might be plenty of people who would gamble more if they didn't have to
drive into town.” The casinos relied more on visitors than locals for their business, but plenty of visitors became locals once they'd had a taste of the city, and there were even plenty of natives who enjoyed a game of poker or a night at the slots. Gambling addicts tended to congregate in areas with casinos, and Las Vegas had more than its fair share.

“I suppose. But if we don't know it's a homicide…”

“That's what you need to determine. You did a good job with the airport scene, right? Confirmed that pretty quickly.”

“Yeah.” Definitely a sigh that time. “Is this the same sort of thing, then?”

“Not exactly.” Catherine glanced at the report again. “This new casino is called the Empire. You'll spot the signs when you get close, I'm sure. Anyway, they just broke ground today, after years of wrangling and environmental impact reports and the like. There's an archeologist on board to make sure the construction doesn't disturb any archeological sites, and sure enough, today she found bones.”

“Old bones on the first day? That's good job security. Look, I know there's no statute of limitations on murder, but—”

“I didn't say they were old, Greg. Nor did I say the bones were human.”

“Catherine… I hope you're not pulling me off a real homicide to go look at some animal bones, because—”

“Have faith, Greg. I'm not going to tell you what to expect when you get there, because I want you to have an open mind. Just… the clock's ticking
on this one. The casino owners are going to want to move full steam ahead, and they've already been held up by a day because of—because of what the archeologist found. So get out there and make a determination before they decide to plow forward anyway and contaminate the scene.”

“As soon as we can get this airplane secured, Catherine, we're on the way.”

“Good,” she said. “Let me know what you find out.”

Catherine wanted to get back to the layout room, where she and Nick had put some of the objects they had taken from the motel, but before she could leave her desk, her cell phone rang. The ring tone meant that it was Lindsey calling. Part of her wanted to ignore it, because this was showing every sign of being an extremely busy shift… oh, what the hell. The case would still be there five minutes from now. Lindsey was her only child, and Catherine tried to balance work and family as well as she could. She picked up the phone. “Hi, Lindsey,” she said.

“Mom.” Lindsey got the one word out, then a sob burst from her, and Catherine felt it in her stomach, twisting her from the inside.

“What's wrong, Lindsey? Are you in trouble? Are you hurt?”

“N-no,” Lindsey managed after several seconds. “It's nothing like that.”

“What's the matter, then?”

“I… you know my friend Sondra, right?”

She had met Sondra a few times, more than she had most of Lindsey's friends. Short, blond hair with the tips dyed black, just this side of pudgy. She had
a sweet smile, but a grating laugh. “Yes, I know her. What about her?”

“I was… I was at this club tonight?”

“Which one?”

“Don't worry, it was a twenty-one and under place. No booze, no fake IDs.”

“Okay,” Catherine said. She guessed her message about fake IDs had gotten through. She also guessed it wouldn't last for long, and until Lindsey was twenty-one, it would be a continuing issue. “So you were at the club. What happened?”

“I was, you know, listening to the music, hanging with my friends, dancing a little. And then I saw Sondra, but she didn't see me. She hadn't come with us. She was in one of the booths, stretched out on the pillows, and she was practically doing it with this guy. They had their tongues so far down each other's throats I thought they would both choke.”

“Well, that's tacky, but why does it have you so upset, honey?”

“Mom, Sondra is like practically engaged to Jayden!”

Right
.
Jayden
. Six three, acne-ravaged skin, tattoos, dyed-black hair left long on one side, buzz-shaved on the other. Catherine thought that style was decades out of date, not that it had ever been attractive. But she still saw people with Mohawks around from time to time, so there was just no telling about fashion. Jayden always wore black, right down to the studded leather bracelets on his wrists and the beads on either end of the bar he kept through his left eyebrow. She remembered him, and the way Sondra had cozied up to him
when she and Lindsey had run into them at the mall. “Practically engaged?”

“They're planning to get married next year,” Lindsey said. “You might not think much of them, Mom, but they're like my most stable friends. They both have good jobs, and Jayden is in college. He's going to be an investment banker.”

Not looking like that
, Catherine thought. But one of the first things a mother learned was when to keep her mouth shut, and she did so now.

“Anyway, I… well, you know, I don't have a lot of experience with a solid family life. But I thought Sondra and Jayden could really pull it off, you know. They've been together for years. They've never broken up. They have like a five-year plan, getting married, getting their degrees, making some money, having a kid. The whole deal. And then tonight I saw Sondra getting busy with this guy at the club, a guy I've never seen before, one of those scummy-looking older guys with a silk shirt open to his navel… it just about made me sick.”

Catherine still hadn't figured out exactly what she was supposed to do about it. Sondra was seventeen, so even if they'd had sex, the guy couldn't be charged with statutory rape. “Did he hurt her?”

“I don't know. I don't think so. Mom, that's not the point!”

“Forgive me for being dense, Lindsey, but I'm a little distracted here tonight. What exactly is the point, then?”

“The point is, what do you think I should do?”

“Have you talked to her about it? Maybe she and Jayden broke up.”

“I saw Jayden this afternoon, and he said everything was fine. I don't know what to say to Sondra, though. We just left the club so she wouldn't see us.”

“Well, you can pretend you didn't see her—”

“Mom, she's my
friend
!” Catherine had to move the phone away from her ear in self-defense. Daughters could hit just the right tone to make their mothers feel both stupid and useless. It had to be in the genetic coding, because Catherine could remember using it on her own mother, but never in Lindsey's presence.

She felt like she had to respond to the issue if not to the tone. “Can't you just tell her what you saw and find out what's going on?”

“I don't know if I can do that. I mean, not without it turning into some whole huge deal. But I can't just pretend it didn't happen, either. I don't know what to say to her, and I can't spend the rest of my life avoiding her.”

Although she really needed to get back to work, Catherine was heartened that Lindsey had actually called her for relationship advice. Usually she preferred to keep her private life at a far remove from her mother. She honestly didn't know what advice to offer, though, beyond the two suggestions that Lindsey had just shot down. “I'll think about it,” she said. “If I have any brilliant insights, I'll call you.”

“Please! As soon as you can!” Lindsey said. “'Bye!”

Just like that, she was gone. Catherine didn't expect any brilliant insights to strike her, but she would do what she could. When the job wasn't taking precedence, that was.

Which it nearly always did.

P
ATTI
V
AN
D
YKE DROVE
the blue tractor that towed Jesse Dunwood's plane into its usual hangar. After confirming that Officer Morston could stay with the plane and that Detective Grayson Williams had arrived to take statements from the various airport employees, Greg and Riley drove across the north edge of the city to the construction site for the new Empire Hotel and Casino.

As Catherine had suggested, there were signs galore flanking the project, some of them showing artist's renditions of a massive structure that looked vaguely like a high-rise version of the Roman Colosseum.

“Nice,” Greg said. “I thought we had moved beyond that whole theme casino thing. You think they'll run gladiatorial games?”

“If people can place bets on the gladiators? They'll make a fortune.”

“You're probably right.”

As at the airport, when Greg approached the site he kept an eye out for a police officer or telltale yellow crime scene tape. He saw the former, a uniformed cop who was waiting just outside a tall, closed gate. She approached the driver's window with a friendly smile. “You're with the lab?” she said. The name
VILLANUEVA
barely fit on her name tag.

“That's right. I'm CSI Sanders and this is CSI Adams.”

“I was told to expect you. I hope this isn't a waste of all our time.”

“That makes three of us,” Riley said. “I don't imagine it would thrill the taxpayers, either.”

“Probably not,” Officer Villanueva replied. “I'll get the gate open, then you can follow me down the graded road for about an eighth of a mile. The last little bit you'll have to cover on foot.”

She did as she said, opening the gate, then closing it behind the SUV. Inside the fence, the only illumination came from moonlight and a little bit of spillover from floodlights showing off the signs on the far side of the fence. Officer Villanueva covered the distance at a brisk jog. “Bet she runs marathons,” Riley said. “She has that runner's look about her. Lean and hungry.”

Riley, Greg noted, was plenty lean herself. He wondered who the first guy in the lab to ask her out would be, then realized it had no doubt already happened. The fact that he hadn't yet heard about it was the only surprise. His money was on Hodges. Greg parked where Villanueva indicated, beside some piles of recently overturned earth. He and
Riley got their field kits and flashlights from the back of the SUV. “It's this way,” the officer said.

“Did you talk to the archeologist who made the find?” Riley asked her as they threaded between mounds of moonlit dirt.

“Not me, no. She was gone when I got here. I took over from another officer who had some paperwork to take care of. It's been pretty quiet here since I came on. But at least it's starting to cool off, right?”

It was, Greg realized. Not time to break out the jackets yet, but he was no longer sweating. Villanueva stopped and pointed down at a shallow depression in the earth. Greg and Riley passed her, shining their lights into the depression. The white of bone was unmistakable.

A lot of bone. The depression held mounds of bones, layers of them filling the space. The archeologist had clearly dug them out but then left them more or less as she found them, not wanting to disturb the scene more than she already had.

“Was there ever a butcher shop here?” Riley asked. “Or a ranch that might have used this area to slaughter livestock?”

“Not that I've ever seen, and I'm a native,” Officer Villanueva said. “My folks and I used to ride dirt bikes out here. It's always been open desert. Housing projects have been moving in on it, but there's never been anything here besides cactus and sand.”